Why MYSTERIES? Because that is the genre I read. Why PARADISE? Because that is where I live.
Among other things, this blog, the result of a 2008 New Year's resolution, will act as a record of books that I've read, and random thoughts.

28 July 2014

Review: THE CARTOGRAPHER, Peter Twohig

An
eleven-year-old boy witnesses a violent crime. Just one year before, he
looked on helplessly as his identical twin died violently. His
determination that he himself is the link changes his life.

The
Cartographer is a captivating novel about a tragic figure in a dark
place. The nameless child who tells the story handles the terrors of his
life by adopting the strengths of fictional pop culture characters he
admires, drawing on comics, radio and television dramas, and movies,
finally recreating himself as a superhero who saves himself by mapping,
and who attempts to redeem himself by giving up his persona so that
another may live again.

His only mentors are a professional standover
man, his shady grandfather, and an incongruous neighbourhood couple who
intervene in an oddly coincidental way.

In
the dark, dangerous lanes and underground drains of grimy 1959
Melbourne, The Cartographer is a story bristling with outrageous wit and
irony about an innocent who refuses to give in, a story peopled with a
richness of shifty, dodgy and downright malicious bastards, mixed with a
modicum of pseudo-aunts, astonishing super heroes, and a few
coincidentally loving characters, some of whom are found in the most
unlikely places.

This novel came highly recommended by a friend whose judgement I trust, but perhaps it is just an indication of how widely our tastes diverge, that I can't share her enthusiasm.

I think I lost my way about halfway through the book after our narrator, 11 years old and often unreliable, survived yet another "adventure" in the name of mapping a safer world. I lost sight of what this book was about, what mystery I should be helping to solve. It was probably all there, just not plainly enough for me. There are some delightfully humorous passages, but I sometimes also doubted the authenticity of the narrator's voice. Juvenile narration is difficult to do at the best of times, but I felt our unnamed hero had too much latitude for his age.

I think there were connecting threads between various incidents in the story but the author made me work too hard to cobble them together. Perhaps at times I am a lazy reader...